Time Meddlers on the Nile

by Deborah Jackson

  “I’m sure it’s not going to be spelled out for us. Maybe we don’t have to know. Maybe we just have to stop your dad from doing anything here. Talking to anyone.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard.” He waved his hand in the air. “There’s no one here to talk to.”

  “I suppose,” said Sarah. “But he had to have done something.”

  “How long do you think we have to wait?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The hours ticked away and Matt’s stomach rumbled. It was so hot, he rolled up his jeans until they were shorts. Sarah instantly followed his example. Even that didn’t seem to help much. His pores had no sweat left to drain from his body and his skin seemed to be shrivelling, like crumpling paper in a bonfire.

  “We should have brought a water bottle along. And snacks.” He dug through his backpack, but only found half a spongy granola bar. “Why did we have to eat everything from our lunch?” He passed a quarter of the bar to Sarah and they devoured the measly portion in seconds. And he was still so thirsty.

  “We’re going to have to find water,” he said. “Maybe we should go back to the river and get a drink there.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise, considering the crocodiles. And a lot of diseases came from drinking Nile water, too. Even back then—now, I mean. We should look for a stream of fresh water from a spring or smaller river.”

  Matt didn’t think it would make much of a difference if they caught some disease, since they wouldn’t exist for very long if they didn’t fix what his father had broken. But he supposed being hunched over with stomach cramps or diarrhea wouldn’t be a very smart thing to encourage either.

  He got up, slipped the backpack over his shoulders, and helped Sarah to her feet. They began walking, keeping the Nile in sight, but shifting towards the softer grasses. Occasionally they crunched over sharp pebbles and winced as they pierced the delicate soles of their feet. Soon, however, the mat of grass became thicker, kinder, plush in comparison to the gritty ground closer to the river, and Matt sighed with relief as it cushioned his battered feet. The grass rippled in a strong breeze that whistled from the north. Walking became more of a chore as they headed into this wind. The sparse leaves on the scattered thorn trees and the odd palm did little to alleviate the scorching of the sun’s rays, either. Matt scanned the ground constantly, searching for any trickle of clean water. Finally he spied a stream deeper in the grassland, digging a path through the soil in boiling, burbling determination. He leaped at it, beckoning Sarah.

  “I can see why people say it’s more precious than gold when they’re dying of thirst,” he said as he cupped his hands and scooped up some water, tipping back his head and pouring it into his parched mouth.

  “We’re not dying of thirst,” said Sarah, slurping up the liquid with as much eagerness as he did, in spite of her words. “At least not yet, anyway.”

  “No, I guess not.” Matt sank to the grass beside the stream and ran a dripping hand through his hair. “But I am hungry.” The water gurgled through his empty stomach.

  “Don’t think about it,” said Sarah, her stomach grumbling too.

  “There isn’t much to eat here. Although, what are those things hanging from that palm tree over there?” He pointed to a huge pod of plum-sized fruit dangling between the feathered branches.

  “Dates, I think.”

  “That’s great. We can eat dates, right?”

  “Yes, Matt, we can eat dates. But how are we going to get them down?”

  “Look, Sarah. We’ve shot rapids, fought with crocodiles. Heck, we’ve even dodged Nazis in another time. We can climb a tree.”

  Matt sloughed off his backpack, rose to his feet, and shuffled towards the long narrow trunk and fern-like branches of the date palm. The bark was rough and corrugated, like roof shingles, but the trunk had no hand or footholds to speak of.

  “Hoist me up,” said Matt.

  Sarah created a sling with her hands and boosted Matt into the tree, but that only got him halfway up the trunk. He reached farther and dug his nails into the bark, then wrapped his legs around the trunk. Inching upward, he climbed to within an arm’s-length of the pod of dates.

  “Now I just have to reach over.”

  “Be careful, Matt.”

  Matt shifted to the side, dug deeper into the trunk with his left hand and reached with his right, snagging the end of the pod.

  “Got it,” he yelled.

  Then the bark peeled away beneath his fingertips and he slipped, slid, pulled the whole pod with him, and fell.

  Sarah tried to catch him, but his weight merely threw her to the ground. The large bunch of dates toppled onto their heads, leaving them both stunned.

  Matt rolled over first, groaned, and threw the date pod onto the ground. He examined Sarah quickly. Her eyelids were fluttering a little off-rhythm, like a butterfly bucking a strong wind, but he didn’t see any scratches or bruises. He sat up and gave her a hand.

  “There’s got to be an easier way to find food,” he moaned.

  “Matt,” she said with a sigh. “I hate to say this, but that was probably the easiest way in this time period.”

  Despite the throbs, aches, and intermittent spike of pain sizzling up and down his body, Matt had to laugh. “You’re probably right.”

  Sarah peered at him through the tangles of her chestnut hair and burst into chuckles too.

  “Date?” he asked, tearing the yellow bulbous fruit from its branch and offering it to her.

  “I’m sure they’re better when they’re dried, but hey, I’m hungry enough.” She bit into the date, made a face, and then continued to munch through a contented smile, juice dribbling out the corner of her mouth.

  “Well, here goes,” said Matt. He took a bite and grimaced at the fruit’s tart taste and fibrous texture. But he stuffed the remainder into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and bit into the next. Before long he’d devoured six of them.

  “We should save some, in case we don’t find any more food. We know they’re good dried too, so if we leave them in the sun we can still eat them,” said Sarah.

  Matt agreed, although he could easily have eaten more. He scooped the rest of the pod up in his arms and laid it out in the sun as they sprawled beneath the tree, soaking up its shade. He kept looking back at the river, hoping his dad would arrive soon. There was no sign of life, though, other than the few date palms, thorny trees, and the monotonous carpet of grass. It was like they were alone in the world.

  Or maybe they weren’t.

  The grassland shifted and bounced farther to the north. Matt spied grey-backed humps moving through the savannah, great leathery mounds.

  “What are those?” he asked.

  Sarah followed the direction of his finger. “From here, they just look like blobs. But they must be big. Rhinos, or—”

  “Elephants,” said Matt with an Eureka! moment. “Sweet.”

  “They’re sweet as long as they stay over there. I don’t care to get trampled.”

  Matt shrugged and kept his eyes trained on the elephants. They did seem to be approaching, but he didn’t feel threatened by them at all. In fact, it was incredible to see these vibrant, mountainous creatures traipsing through the wild where they belonged, instead of leashed to a trainer in a circus.

  Suddenly a gazelle bounded across their path. It had a tan pelt with a black stripe that streaked across its belly and snout. Matt jumped to his feet and watched it go, tracking its leaping course through the grass.

  “I thought you said Nubia was all desert,” he said to Sarah.

  “Well, I thought it was, from what I read. But maybe it wasn’t always. Or maybe there were certain regions that weren’t,” Sarah replied, her eyes crinkled in deep thought. “Across the river, it looks like desert.”

  As if to emphasize her statement, the north wind blew into their faces and stung their eyes with grains of sand. Then another shape thrust through the savannah, following the same path as the gazelle. It blended wel
l with the golden grass, but a ruff of tawny fur protruded above the tips. It let loose a deep, throaty rumble.

  “Matt, I think that’s a—”

  “Lion!” he yelled and yanked Sarah up and away just as the creature vaulted from the grass. It landed in one stride right where they’d been sitting, but it didn’t pause or change its course. Instead it raced after the gazelle. More lions filtered through the grass, coming from opposite points in the savannah. They exploded towards the zigzagging gazelle. The poor creature dodged left, then right, but it was surrounded. The male lion with the shaggy mane leaped into the air and hammered it to the ground.

  Matt didn’t care if the lions’ main objective was the gazelle. He and Sarah were still easy targets, and maybe these cats were really hungry. He gripped Sarah’s hand, snatched up his backpack, and dashed through the long grass, angling away from the river where the lions were hunting. But the predators’ presence must have spooked the elephants. He heard a trumpet up ahead and the thunder of trampling feet. Their stampede shook the ground. Trees crashed to the earth.

  Matt halted, not sure where they should run.

  “We have to head back to the river!” screamed Sarah.

  “The river isn’t much better!” yelled Matt.

  “I’ll take my chances with the crocodiles. We have to get out of their path!”

  Sarah was right and Matt knew it. But now that they’d left the riverbank and hurtled across the grassland, where was the river? He veered left again, hoping this would take him back towards the Nile, but the earth quivered even more violently. He risked a glance behind. The lead elephant in the charge was bearing down on them, its trunk swinging from side to side and its tapered ivory tusks lowered towards Matt’s back.

  Guess my number’s up.

  He should have known it would end in some horrific way. What did he really think would happen if they kept travelling to these dangerous places and times? Never thought he’d go this way, though.

  Death by elephant.

  Chapter 5

  First Contact

  A paralysing shriek tore through the air and the elephant floundered to the ground right behind Matt. The explosive rush from its fall and the tremendous earth tremors made Matt lose his grip on Sarah’s hand and his footing too, but he didn’t feel its tusks puncture his back, nor did its enormous body crush him. He rolled away from the gasping, shuddering beast, only then noticing a cluster of arrows jutting from its belly. He glanced across the tree trunk of a leg to where he’d lost Sarah’s hand. She was still upright, still running, although, as he watched, she slammed to a stop and stared at something with a tilted head.

  Matt followed her gaze, only then discovering the arrows’ source. Broad muscled men straddling chestnut and ebony horses lunged at the elephant herd, firing arrows into their thick hides. Alongside these men, other hunters in chariots, each drawn by two swift horses, angled off the elephants, leaving no room for them to escape. But the huge beasts were not giving up without a fight. Many of them charged at the riders, managing to gore some horses with their long tusks. One man, who was thrown from his chariot when an elephant attacked his horse, sailed through the air and skidded over the ground. Ouch.

  Still, most of the battle seemed like nothing more than a game of Risk to these men, only riskier. They knew exactly how to separate the elephants from the herd and bring them down one by one with a flurry of arrows to their chests. The beasts groaned and collapsed, spilling pitchers of their blood and covering the ground with dark red stains.

  Matt shook his head at the slaughter, but he knew that he would have been dead if the men hadn’t broken up the stampede. Soon the rest of the herd had fled and eight large bulls lay dead or dying. The men leaped off their horses and chariots, arrows still strung. Matt jumped to his feet, hands in the air, hoping those arrows weren’t meant for him.

  Sarah backed up as the men moved forward, smiling tentatively and nodding at them.

  As if they’d suddenly noticed that two humans were in the fray, the men stopped advancing and stared. They had curly black hair, glistening bare chests, and leopard kilts around their waists. Patterns of scars puckered their faces and chests. They looked fascinated by the two strangers, and equally wary.

  A young man drew up on a golden chariot tethered to two sleek black horses. He was dressed differently from the others. A pleated linen kilt hung round his waist and a fringed shawl was draped over his shoulder. A green and white pendant in the shape of a ram’s head was fastened around his neck, and in his hands he clutched a finely-honed longbow, bent back to full effect, aimed, not at the groaning elephant, but directly at Matt.

  “Who are you?” he asked, eyeing the pair’s ragged clothes and mud-caked skin. Matt tilted his head, amazed that he understood the man perfectly when he was clearly speaking another language. He’d have to ask Sarah about it, if they got out of this alive.

  “We’re travellers,” said Sarah, her eyes suddenly widening. She spoke the strange language, too. “We come from—”

  Matt figured she was sorting out the best answer, and he wasn’t about to interrupt. He had no explanation except the truth, which rarely seemed to help their situations.

  “From the north.”

  The African snorted and mumbled something to his men. They chuckled quite merrily. “If you came from the north, you would have passed through Napata. I would have heard of you. But you certainly couldn’t have come from the south.”

  The men chuckled again.

  “Perhaps they came from the Red Sea, General,” said another man—one with an abraded face, as if he’d been tossed from his chariot and had skidded over the rough grass.

  Wait a minute. Matt’s eyes widened. It was the guy who’d been tossed and . . .

  “With the raiders, the Medjay,” the man continued.

  Matt didn’t know who the Medjay were, but he assumed, from the man’s sneer and his reference to “raiders,” that they weren’t exactly in his good books.

  “No,” he said, interrupting, despite his promise to himself that he wouldn’t. “We’re honest people. Um . . . traders.”

  The general’s eyes narrowed, although the corners of his lips pulled back into a smile. “Traders, hmm. What do you have to trade, then?”

  “Well,” said Matt, hunting through his memory for the appropriate goods for this time period from the tremendous amount of historical reading he’d done. Funny, he couldn’t come up with anything.

  “Wood,” said Sarah. “We had wood—cedar from . . . Lebanon. But we lost it on the Nile. Our boat was torn up in the rapids, and it sank, and we had to swim to shore, and, and . . .”

  “We were nearly eaten by crocodiles,” added Matt.

  “Hmph,” said the man they called General, slowly releasing the tension on his bow. “Crocodiles. From the looks of you, I believe the last part. Considering your strange clothes and odd accent, I have no doubt you’re from a foreign land as well. But why were you travelling by boat when you could only have come overland from the Red Sea? Where are your horses? Why would you be coming from the south?” He paused to let his questions sink in. “No, I believe you’re collaborating with the Medjay.”

  “An interesting development,” grunted a rider behind him, a man with grey streaks in his curly black hair.

  “Or a perfect arrangement for spies,” snapped the unfortunate charioteer.

  Matt looked at Sarah. This wasn’t going well. She met his gaze and slipped him a shaky smile. “We’re not raiders,” said Matt, making a last-ditch effort.

  “No,” said the general. “Not anymore. You’re slaves.”

  He waved his arm. Four men circled the time travellers and tackled them. Matt tried to struggle, but he was pinned down, and ropes snared his hands and feet. The men slipped another rope over his head and knotted it at his neck. When they finally released him, he could only manage to stand and shuffle. They tossed the rope to the rider, the older man who, in spite of his grey-streaked hair, was strong
and sturdy, muscles rippling along his torso. He tugged the rope sharply to warn Matt how it tightened into a chokehold if there wasn’t any slack.

  How could Matt escape that?

  He turned to look at Sarah, who was similarly bound. That scared him more than being tied up himself. He hated to see anyone treat her roughly. But like it or not, they were now prisoners of these men. Nubians, most likely. Their first contact certainly hadn’t gone well. And somehow they were supposed to stop his father from altering time and safeguard the timeline? How could they stop anything if they were tied up and carted away?

  Now that Matt and Sarah had been handed off to the guard, some of the other men went around and thrust knives into the elephants that still lived, finishing them off. Then they sawed off their ivory tusks—the prize, no doubt. A gift for the pharaoh, or something to trade? When they’d finished, they neatly skinned the elephants’ hides, slicing off gigantic hunks of purplish meat. At least they weren’t just taking the ivory and leaving the animals to rot. They spread the meat out in the sun, likely to bake and dry. Other chunks they strung over fires, and let them sizzle and smoke.

  The guard tugged Matt and Sarah over to a nearby tree and tied them to it. He took a minute to examine Matt’s backpack, tried to open it with little success, and then cocked an eyebrow at Matt.

  “It’s just extra padding,” he said. “For carrying things.”

  The guard’s forehead creased, but he didn’t ask any questions. After all, their jeans and shirts were completely foreign to this man, too. He chucked the backpack to the side. After that, he just stood watch and let them observe the activities.

  Matt studied the men prepare elephant meat over their respective fires, the breeze capturing the rich aroma and feathering it under his nose. His mouth watered. He figured they would eat the meat themselves and leave their prisoners to starve, and was shocked when he saw the young man—the general—speak to a boy tending the fire and point to them. The boy bowed, grasped a sizable chunk of meat and a leather pouch, and ran up to them. He untied their hands and offered them the meat, as well as dates and a flat piece of grainy stuff Matt thought must be bread.